Wait, she thought. Wait until she is closer.

There was a short stillness, and then the eagle cried out. The call was sharp, piercing in a way her offspring’s had not been. Maeben nudged her chick, pulled back, and then thrust forward again, knowing now that something was wrong.

Mena shoved the infant away and swung for the bird’s head. She might have ended it there, but the sword caught a branch, shifted, and only grazed the creature’s beak.

Maeben rose screeching into the air, her visage one of carnivorous indignation. She screeched again, a cry so fierce Mena’s eyes shut against it. She had the momentary sensation that the sound had shredded the skin of her face just as the talons would. But then her eyes were open again.

The eagle plunged, talons first, with all her power and weight. Mena stumbled backward. Her heel caught, and she fell over the edge of the nest. Trying to grasp something, she let go of the sword. As she fell free of the lip, the fingers of her left hand grabbed for the fiber rope. The fibers tore through her palm, slick and abrasive at the same time. She somersaulted around and got her other hand on the rope. This yanked her to a halt. Then whatever had held the fishhook anchor snapped. Mena dropped through the air a few frantic seconds. She smashed into a branch. It broke almost instantly, but it had slowed her enough that, falling again, she looked down and grasped for the next lower branch. She hit it with her chest, swung around it, and dropped, horizontal now, to the network of branches just below it. That stopped her. The rope cascaded around her. The hooks fell just beside her and one of them pierced her leg.

She would have cried out, but events were crowding so fast upon her she did not have the luxury of that time to waste. Smacked by a furious gust of wind and a splattering of rain like icy stones, the tree leaned farther than it had yet. Tremors ripped down through the rotten trunk. She felt it give and knew it had cracked somewhere below the canopy of the other trees. It was going to topple.

Maeben was aloft again, beating the air as she tried to get at Mena, lashing with her beak, her talons reaching. Mena yanked the hook from her leg and hurled it at the eagle’s face. Her aim was off. It sailed past the raptor, over her shoulder. It hung there for a moment, a still line having missed its mark. The great bird kept flapping her wings, intent on her prey, gauging the moment of attack, ignoring the import of the tree’s slow motion. It seemed an endless moment.

Then the pull of the falling tree sped up so rapidly it broke the pause. Mena felt herself recede from the bird. She was descending with the tree, but she did not take her eyes off the eagle. She saw the rope tighten, saw how the far end, which had started to fall on the other side of the eagle, began to be pulled down with the tree. The line snapped taut. The rope cut into the wing, dragged over the feathers and bone until the hooks caught in the bird’s flesh at the shoulder joint. The rope-the far end of which was knotted in the limbs of the falling giant-yanked Maeben downward with a force the bird clearly could not fathom. Her beak opened in disbelief, wings flattened behind her body, eyes, for once, filled with terror.

Mena had seen enough. She pushed herself away from the toppling tree, turned in midair and, with her arms outstretched as if she too could fly, faced the canopy rushing toward her.

End of Book Two

Hanish lay a long time without moving, aware every second of the body pressed against his. He did not want to wake her, to have to talk and smile and begin the day with a lover’s platitudes. At least that was how he explained it to himself. Better to minimize how good it was to feel her naked contours in the places they touched. Better not to fully admit how right it felt to have the curls of her hair entwined in his fingers. He knew that traces of her would cling to him in many ways. This pleased him, but it was better not to acknowledge that at some level he held still so that he could absorb more and more of her into his skin. He would taste her all day on his tongue, in the corners of his mouth, as a scent off his own body that he would catch in the air as he turned his head. He would have liked not to have thought about all these things, but he could think of nothing else.

No woman before Corinn Akaran had thrust herself so deeply into every conscious moment of his existence. Since that night at Calfa Ven she was never truly out of his mind. He refused to put a word to the emotion he felt for her, but this did not mean he didn’t sense the word-vague and sentimental as it was-lurking in the air between them. She had been shy that first night, unsure of herself, coy with her body and all the more attractive for it. Her reticence was short-lived, though. It seemed that if she was going to give herself, she wanted to do so completely, with abandon. Her mouth in kissing him was driven by a hunger that stunned him, her lips and tongue and teeth all devouring him at once. It almost felt like she had conquered him, instead of the other way around. A disquieting thought.

It was remarkable how much it elated him to have her near. When she was not near, he either actively thought of her or moved around nagged by a feeling of unease. He was neglecting his companions. He knew that they felt slighted. Considering their fragile egos, he should not go long without finding ways to praise and acknowledge them, but the very thought of it seemed tiresome. Nobody else seemed as interesting as Corinn. No other face gave him such a feeling of well-being to look upon. No one listened to him as she did. With nobody else did such mundane pastimes as archery, which they spent hours at, become sure pleasures. She was so much better at it than he was. For some reason this fact tickled him like a joke of his own devising.

What had he been thinking when he began this? He’d said he would keep the princess close, to watch over her and make sure she was there if the Tunishnevre needed her. So when did that effort become this swirl of emotion? It was dangerous; he knew that. His thoughts were not focused and clear as they had always been before. Just the day previous, he had been stunned to realize he’d been asked a question that he had not heard at all. A circle of faces stared at him, concern and surprise on their features. He was not fully himself, right down to the fact that he would not and could not do away with the thing that weakened him. He should shove her back into her place. He should cut the affection between them with public, bladed wit. Corinn was, after all, easy to insult. She was quick to rile. A few comments poking fun at her now would send her into flaming anger, which would be a better thing than the situation he now found himself in.

But he simply could not. Why should he have to? Consider all the things he’d accomplished in his life. All the gains he’d won for his people. He’d conquered the Known World! Even now the Tunishnevre wound down from the Methalian Rim, only weeks away from their deliverance. It was his successes that made it possible for Maeander to push his search for the other Akaran girl out to Vumu. If he found her, they’d have the blood they needed from a second source. Corinn need not bleed, need not die. Considering all these things, why should he deny himself love?

Oh. There was that word! The very fact that he formed such a sentence in his head prompted him to rise. He peeled himself away from the princess, really not wanting to wake her now, not wishing to have to speak. It took ages to pull his arm, clammy with their mingled moisture, from under her neck.